Evaluating the effectiveness of machine learning techniques in forecasting the severity of traffic accidents

Abstract

Traffic accidents pose a significant public safety concern, leading to numerous injuries and fatalities worldwide. Predicting the severity of these accidents is crucial for developing effective road safety measures and reducing casualties. This paper proposes an analytic framework that utilizes machine learning models, including Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, and Artificial Neural Networks, to predict the severity of traffic accidents based on contributing factors. This study analyzed ten years of UK traffic accident data (2005–2014, N = 2,047,256) to develop and compare different ML models. Results show that the proposed Random Forest and Logistic Regression models achieved an 87% overall prediction accuracy, outperforming Naive Bayes (80%) and Artificial Neural Networks (80%). By employing Random Forest-based feature importance analysis, the study identified Engine Capacity, Age of the vehicle, make of vehicle, Age of the driver, vehicle manoeuvre, daytime, and 1st road class as the most sensitive variables influencing traffic accident severity prediction. Additionally, the suggested RF model outperformed most existing models, attaining a remarkable overall accuracy and superior predictive performance across various injury severity classes. The findings have significant implications for developing efficient road safety measures and enhancing the current traffic safety system. The proposed framework and models can be adapted to various datasets to achieve accurate and effective predictions of traffic accident severity, serving as a valuable reference for implementing traffic accident management and control measures. Future research could extend the proposed framework to datasets containing Casualty Accident information to further improve the accuracy of injury severity prediction.